Tonight’s school meeting was a disappointing event. The ‘final’ proposal is to approve, subject to securing funding, the rebuilding of the high school at the NRC site and to convert the current high school into a second elementary school.

This does sound okay at first. However, there are some serious problems.

• the timeline adds a full year and a half to the move in time. What was originally promised as a Sept. 2009 opening for a rebuild high school in the old NRC Building is now projected as a late 2010 opening.
• the second elementary school will not open until sometime in 2012.
• all of this is contingent upon securing funding. However, as of June 11th there is no agreement in place to proceed. The school board said that there is a piece of property owned by the school board that might be transferred to the province but they would not say anything further about that except that if the transfer of the undisclosed property takes place there will be enough money to rebuild the schools.

We need you to keep the pressure on. The school board needs to know that we need our schools and that the delays are not appropriate.

You and your neighbours will have received this week a postcard from the UNA, the UEL residents, and the two U Hill Parent Advisory Councils asking you to email the school board and the province. Please do this. We have set up an easy email web site for you to use. The URL is http://www.rebuilduhill.ca.

The complete report can be download here.
. It is also on the VSB web site http://www.vsb.bc.ca

There will be an opportunity to make a public presentation to the school board on June 19th. The school board will make it’s final decision on June 25th.